unforum

[thebruce]

I'm talking with MS's track record with XBOX, not with PC OS's. Therefore, discussing their overall track record as a company isn't relevent here. Until MS demonstrates that they couldn't care less in some way about the XBOX market, then I will trust that they know what they're doing and that they DO care about their XBOX customers. So let it go.

[Eclipse]

Kagehi Kossori really wants to get his point across.

I have to agree with thebruce here. We are/were discussing Microsoft's involvement with the xbox, and the next xbox, not their PC's.

From the time that the xbox hit store shelves Microsoft put out a superior product, along with a few games they funded..(Halo:CE). In fact, in order for MS to compete in a console market they had to drop the price of their game systems so low that they were hardly making anything on it. At one point the xbox was being sold for almost $30 cheaper than any game console on the market. They didn't try to "milk the market" by making you pay for memory cards to save your games, which can get extremely expensive as any PS/PS2 owner knows who has at least one memory card for every game they play.

They hire bungie to develop Halo2. They then hire the company who did this great ARG to tide us over until the release of Halo2, which ultimately brought you to these boards to bitch about them, they didn't make us pay to be involved.

So, all in all I'd say they've done a great job on the xbox. They've seen the mistakes they've made, and done their best to correct them(the old cd drives). If you've got a problem with the company, don't buy the product. I can't stand Wal-Mart so guess what, I don't shop there.

[/rantover]

[Motoss]

There are PS2 owners with a memory card for every game? Ludicrous!

[Eclipse]

Lol..I couldn't tell if that was sarcasm or not..I'm guessing it is

[INCyr]

[sunburntkamel]

[IcyMidnight]

All things being equal I wouldn't care if Xbox 2 had BC or not.

Things are not equal however. I do think however that having xbox emulated would be a bad thing overall.
Either they have to emulate the xbox using hardware or software. If they do it with hardware you can gaurantee the price of manufacturing the system will go up and translate into a higher consumer price too. I definitely don't want to pay for my xbox twice! If they do it with software, I guess that they could store it on the harddrive, but I would prefer if they spent more time making xbox 2 better. Plus an emulated environment is very difficult to make work as well as the real thing.

Edit: You will note that it costs money to make, update, maintain and buy Virtual PC. Don't expect to get emulation for free on Xbox2. I don't want to pay for something that I most likely won't use.

As for playstation 2's BC. Please note how crappy the graphics are on that system. It is just a suped up PSX. The xbox 2 will (hopefully) be a brand new system.

I don't really play my old games anymore anyway. I still own my N64 for the thought and happiness, but I haven't played it for more than 10 minutes since I bought my gamecube on launch day. I also bought the gameboy player for my gamecube so that I could replay the old zeldas and mario. I did make it through zelda 3, but I haven't even played zelda 1 or mario since I bough them.

And on the company front. I used to be a nintendo fanboy. I owned an NES, then a 64, then I bought the gamecube on launch day. I have been very disappointed in the number of enjoyable games that came out on the GC. The whole reason that I bought it was for a chance to play mario or zelda online. What did we get? 1 online game and a handful of lan games. Bah. I hope that xbox 2 is as good in it's time as xbox is now.

[Ranger D]

Some more info on the xbox 2 and their development kits that Microsoft is now shipping to studios.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20146

[archon]

Yeah, I just read that yesterday, Ranger.

[Clayfoot]

My humble opinion: It would be easy enough for Microsoft to emulate X-Box v.1 in software on X-Box 2 at full, original speed. It's been possible to emulate x86 architecture and Windows at full speed (or faster!) on RISC processors ever since the Alpha Mac back in the late 90's. However, MS has no incentive to do so. According to an article from last June, MS has no intention to emulate v.1.

If you want to play XBox v.1 games, you already have a fine piece of equipment for that: your original X-Box. The v.2 X-Box only really needs to play new games that will only work on the new platform. The new platform will have games that knock our socks off, such that we will gladly fork over about $300 (my humble estimate) for the new equipment.

Personally, I just bought my X-Box this month, and I have no intention of buying a new console --ever. The one reason I would consider buying a new console: you guys. If MS convinces all of you to hop onto a new game on a new platform that I can't play without upgrading, then you could drag me along with you. That line of reasoning makes me wonder if Sean Stewart is busy working on I Love Bees v.2 for Halo 3 on X-Box 2.

[water10]

[FauxHammer]

[weephun]

More info on XBOX 2 here: xbox 2 info: http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/06/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm

Looks like they are leaning more towards backwards compatability now.

[thebruce]

actually, that's an editorial, not news... he may be spinning info to sound like backwards compatibility, but with no official announcement and everything spinnable either way, no one knows yet for sure if BC is yet being included...

for a tip, in order to get gaming related news, go to gaming related websites cnn and mass media news sources will usually just give editorials, and sometimes breaking news intermingled. But gaming sites (good ones) will always have the latest news, and separated from 'outside' spins...

typically for xbox news, I stick to teamxbox.com. Going through their news archive for anything Xbox 2 related will show you current status of known details regarding Xbox 2 (and that's quite limited at the moment)

[weephun]

eh, wasn't searching for things. Just happened upon that one and remembered that there was a thread here of people who were debating the subject. Anyway ...